The present invention relates to computer graphics, and more particularly, to systems and methods for the computerized solution of the intersection of polygons.
Current systems focus on the interior of a polygon and employ rasterized approximations to the target and intersecting polygons. The intersection is then produced by scanning the sets of polygons to produce a raster of the result. The perimeter of the resulting raster is then finally converted to a description of its perimeter.
One problem with known prior art systems, however, is that a raster is an approximate solution since the raster entails discrete sampling of the problem space. Increased accuracy can only be obtained by using a finer raster. In some cases the full mathematical precision of the solution cannot be obtained without encountering round-off difficulties with the computer representation of numbers. Using a raster approximation is also very slow and increases with the absolute size of the intersecting polygons.